Comment

Fight for decent youth facilities

Young people today often have nowhere to go and nothing to do apart from hang around the streets. Some young people have come to view an ASBO as a badge of honour. Maybe if the kids had something to do then we wouldn't be having such trouble.

Kristina Andrews, Wythenshawe Socialist Party

We could create a place for young people to do different activities or something they are interested in so they feel they are achieving something positive. In my opinion ASBOs have no effect at all. Parents, who work the longest hours in Europe, often feel powerless to do anything.

I've heard recently that Wythenshawe is being promoted but as far as I can see there is nothing to promote. The Ł30,000 that is going to a PR company could be put into community centres and youth clubs, for example.

I went to a youth club when I was younger - which has now gone. Although it wasn't up to scratch, it was somewhere to go meet up with friends.

Yes - there is now a new community centre, but when I take my little girl there, security guards are moving those who haven't got membership away. You only get a membership pass if you live in a certain area. Why? I don't know. Some parents cannot afford the fees they charge. It should be free so that those who don't have money have somewhere to go.

A mobile van with a couple of computers inside is being presented as a mobile youth centre. This is a poor excuse for a youth centre and looks to me like a PR exercise by the local council.

Meanwhile the government is bailing out Northern Rock after the bosses got too greedy and messed up. We are paying while run down communities are being starved of the extra funding they desperately need.

Youth need the stability of a static facility with regular hours and full-time youth workers rather than the police who appear to run this mobile centre.

They should open the community centre up and let young people run some classes for younger people who look up to them! Then the young people involved will begin to see their own potential.

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In The Socialist 19 March 2008:

Global economic crisis